She Went in Haste to the Mountain (Page 8)

Perhaps they also had premonitions that this could be the start of something still greater. Where else could they find refuge and protection, if not in the place that especially keeps the presence of God? Is that not also the best place to pray to Her who is His mother and their own, always so ready to help her poor children? But before going inside to pray, they had to pour out their tears on the walls outside.

Those walls, austere, strong, rising up above the little plateau on which Garabandal rests, have withstood the savage storms of the Cantabrian Mountains,(20) looking on century after century of days and nights, of good times and bad. Generations and generations of Garabandalinos have come there with their greatest joys, their most hidden sufferings, their final hopes . . . But never
had those walls seen such ineffable sobbing of children, such exceptional tears as those the four girls shed under their shelter, while the sun set forever on that day of June 18th, 1961.

There was no one there at the time to mount the church tower to signal the hour by ringing the bells; but with the tears of the children, which were not sorrowful ones, a mystery would begin to sound out from Garabandal that would find a great echo in innumerable hearts.

We met some young girls who were playing, and when they saw us crying, they asked us, Why are you crying?
We told them, BECAUSE WE HAVE SEEN AN ANGEL.
They ran off to tell the school-mistress.(21)

20. This extends across almost all the northern part of Spain, running along the Cantabrian Sea, separating the narrow band of costal low lands from the wider and higher expanses in the interior country.

21. In Garabandal there were two state schools in the same building; one of them was for boys, and the other for girls. The first was taught by the schoolmaster from the garden with the apple tree; the second was presided over by a lady who now comes on the scene and will remain in the village for many years. Her name was Serafina Gómez González; she was a native of Cossío; a widow of Raimundo Rodríguez and had a daughter named Toñito.